


Up Through the Atmosphere

by ishie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: “I’m looking for a particular ship,” Ben Solo told the scavenger girl. “And I heard that it might be somewhere near this outpost.”Here be unconnected Reylo AU ficlets, updated erratically.





	1. You Can Have Your Own Set of Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Title & chapter names are all from Mary Poppins because that is a thing that made sense at the time.
> 
> This is a Tumblr ask fill for **Odylism** , who gave me the [first sentence](http://thirddeadlysin.tumblr.com/post/174903314982/lets-play-a-game) of the fic!

“I’m looking for a particular ship,” Ben Solo told the scavenger girl. “And I heard that it might be somewhere near this outpost.”

He gave his own bit of scrap a desultory brush, studying her face from under his lashes as casually as he could. Was that a flinch? A flicker of interest? Whatever it was, it passed quickly. Without looking at him, she lifted one shoulder in a shrug but didn’t slow her scrubbing for an instant. 

Ben gripped his thigh under the table–hard enough to reignite the throb under his bruises–and leaned in. They were surrounded by other work tables, each occupied by one or two similarly industrious scavengers. He dropped his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry farther than the end of their own table. “I can pay. More credits than you can dream of.”

“I can dream of a lot,” she shot back. She still didn’t look up.

Forgetting himself, he grasped for the barest tendril of the Force, hoping he might use it to find a lever that would move her without a fuss. He couldn’t hold it, though, couldn’t lose himself into it long enough to read even his own emotions, not with the constant rush in his head of _please my mother I don’t know how please I have to I_ can’t _help me I can’t do this alone please_. Ben strained to push it down again, to bury it deep where he couldn’t hear it anymore, that tiny sniveling voice he couldn’t outrun, but no sooner had he had the thought than the girl– _the girl_.

“ _Ben_ ,” she breathed, her hands finally stilling as his name spilled from her mouth. The name she must have plucked from his own head, because he hadn’t given it to her yet. She dropped her brush to reach for him; Ben clutched at her outstretched hand and that voice in his head quieted enough that he could hear her promise, “Ben, you can choose another path.”


	2. They're At It Again, Step In Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The problem is that nine times out of ten it doesn't last."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luke does not strike me as the celestial matchmaking kind, especially not since his only real exposure to courtship was the extremely confusing and mildly traumatic escalation of hostilities/makeouts of Leia and Han.
> 
> This one's for **EA** , who gave me the first line!

"The problem is that nine times out of ten it doesn't last." 

Luke could hear his own bitterness. This was another of the surprises that awaited him in the Netherworld, how easily he still slid into pessimism and doubt even now. It was beyond frustrating, though, how the Force kept returning his awareness to these awkward tableaux. They were nothing but mirror images of fonder memories: Ben hulking down a passageway before stopping short, his gaze turning inward as his jaw clenched and his eyes softened; Rey sucking in a breath and pressing her lips together, her expression frosting over like a Hoth sunrise.

Yoda seemed to consider Luke's words for a moment, then gave a soft grunt. Or, the incorporeal impression of a soft grunt, given that neither of them inhabited anything like a body with the appropriate apparatus to make noise. Words, too, were right out, even though Luke still clung to the idea of having given voice to his thoughts. 

"I mean, don't you ever get tired of watching people make the same mistakes, over and over?" He'd had more than his fill of it. If he could, he'd reach out and knock their stubborn heads together, hard enough to skip them out of this rut they'd worn into the very fabric of themselves. Wasn't it enough that he'd already watched another thread identical to this one run itself out? 

"Apparent, the lesson is, when you know how to look." If Yoda had still had a face to observe, Luke knew, he would have seen it pinch into that expression that meant his former Master was both pleased and exasperated with Luke's obtuseness. 

"It's not like I can see anything anyway," Luke groused. Distantly, he felt Ben spike into a gout of anger, a burning brand in the darkness that somehow started to melt Rey's icy fury. Luke wished he could make a disgusted noise and spin away, maybe letting his robes and out-flung arms flick his displeasure into the air. Instead he settled for letting go of the cord that bound him to the younger two and concentrated on smoothing himself into something approaching the shape of the waves he had been trying to reach. "Okay, tell me again how you found the Wellspring."


	3. Listen, Listen, She's Calling to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I just realized I never answered you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 to the anon who gave this first line!

"I just realized I never answered you."

Ben never stopped feeling his heart lurch in his chest when Rey spoke first, unprompted. He was always so sure in that instant that the _no_ he dreaded was about to finally drop between them. And she loved to talk. Loved to tell him about her day, to teach him the things she learned, to prod him to share his own with her. She delighted in pulling questions from him, and he couldn’t resist. Her side of their conversations skipped like a stone from one topic to the next, never landing for long or diving deep. He tried to respond in kind, but he had kept himself dammed up too long to speak easily or freely. Not until it was night, when the dark of their room drew a veil between them and the rest of the universe.

In the dark, Ben felt like there was nothing between them. In the dark, he could talk to her as easily as she did to him. He shared his secrets, those hopes and dreams and fears that clawed at him. He knew her, then, and she him.

So, now, as Rey's head lay heavily on his outstretched arm and her fingers chased her breath across his bare chest, he knew the question she meant to answer. For once, his heart kept pumping that slow and steady beat.

For once, he didn't fear what she would say.

He kissed her temple, tasting the salt on her skin. "It's okay," he said. "I know."


	4. get the stars thrown in (if you reach)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were no comforts in her mother's tales, only more lessons like those she already learned every day in the hot sands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Thanks, I hate it" to whoever it was who asked once if anyone thought Rey's parents ever loved her.

When Rey was very small, sometimes, her mother would sit at her bedside and tell her stories of the worlds beyond the stars above them. The stories frightened her, mostly. Sent her quaking beneath her blanket, breathing through her mouth as quietly as she could. They were full of princesses and rebels, pirates and monsters; all of them starving for blood and pain and war. Children went hungry, or missing, or worse. There were no comforts in her mother's tales, only more lessons like those she already learned every day in the hot sands.

Rey could have asked her mother to tell gentler stories, perhaps. Maybe her mother would have agreed, if Rey could find the right way to ask.

But even though they terrified her, she gathered each of her mother's words as if they were precious. Maybe they were. They wouldn't warm her on cold nights, or fill her aching belly, or act as a comfort in the long years she will wait. But she remembers the solid press of her mother's hip against her side. The sharp smell of her mother's breath when she leaned close. The pinch of long fingers in the tender crook of her arm.

Not much of what Rey remembers is pleasant, so she polishes the memories over and over until they are as smooth and lifeless as stone.

From Jakku, she knew the arrangement of the stars and planets in her mother's stories. When she learned to read astronav, she delighted in seeing how they rearranged themselves from different worlds. What was as familiar to her as the inside of her own eyes looked so different from anywhere else. She longs to visit the places her mother told her about. To stand on distant lands and look up to see the new configurations of stars and constellations. Maybe some day she will tell her own stories, tracing new patterns in some night sky.

But, Rey fears, all of this would sound ridiculous to people who have seen as much of the galaxy as her new friends. So, as they move through hyperspace, barely one step ahead of those who pursue them, she keeps her mouth shut. She doesn't listen when they gather together to debate safe landing spots, doesn't ask why they favor this over that. She won't pass her finger between points of light or learn the names they go by on whatever new world is next. Everything -- the whole galaxy, beyond her charts and distances... Everything that is not the deep dark black that blanketed Jakku is a mystery to her, and she would keep it that way.

After a lifetime, she has given up the only sky she ever truly knew.

She can't bear to learn another.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working on a super long Reylo AU and could use some more prompts/asks for distraction purposes. Want to help? Leave a first sentence or a prompt [at my tumblr](http://thirddeadlysin.tumblr.com/ask) or in a comment below. <3


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